The east wall of the Public Safety Annex Building was painted in the summer of 2015 to reflect the Urban Flower Field project below it in the future Pedro Park. (Pioneer Press file)

Meeting as the Housing and Redevelopment Authority, the council awarded Ackerberg tentative developer status in front of a roomful of neighborhood residents opposed to the idea. Several steps remain before the developer — which has not asked for public subsidy — can begin construction.

The arrangement includes parks improvements and 20 years of parks maintenance to the neighboring lot.

The decision was opposed by City Council Member Rebecca Noecker, who represents the downtown neighborhood that has rallied for a decade or more to build a full-block, two-thirds block or half-block park at the site, which is bounded by Ninth, 10th, Minnesota and Robert streets.

“What does it mean when we sit at this table and make plans for the future?” Noecker said. “The plan that was voted on in 2006 and 2009 and 2010 and 2015 … was to build additional green space downtown … and actually about a full-block park, eventually.”

Noecker noted that the vacancy rate for downtown office space is 20 percent. “We have plenty of room … for creative class jobs downtown,” she said.

Added Council Member Jane Prince, “When we had a high vacancy rate … residents came to our rescue downtown and filled a lot of buildings. … The next thing you need when you have high-density housing is green and open space to serve those people.”

Council President Russ Stark said he could “really see both sides of the equation” but he worried about St. Paul becoming a bedroom community to other cities that have grown their employment sector.

“The residential growth we’ve had downtown is tremendous,” Stark said. “On the flip side, we have not yet seen the job growth downtown that all of us would want to see … and that’s somewhat true all the way down the Green Line.”

Council Member Amy Brendmoen, who chairs the HRA, joined Stark, Chris Tolbert and Dan Bostrom in voting in favor of the arrangement, which has not been finalized. Noecker, Prince and Dai Thao voted against it.

Prior to the vote, council members heard impassioned remarks from Kati Berg, a resident of The Pointe of St. Paul and acting chair of the new Friends of Pedro Park Expansion, which brought members to the meeting.

“Downtown’s residential growth means parkland is needed more than ever,” Berg said. “In all of downtown … there’s no playgrounds for school-aged children, there are no sport courts, not even a picnic table.”

PEDRO PARK HISTORY

The vote allows Minneapolis-based Ackerberg — which was represented by chief executive officer Stuart Ackerberg at the meeting — 180 days to do more exploration and refine their proposal, said Mollie Scozzari, a spokeswoman for St. Paul Planning and Economic Development.

“Another vote will take place if a development agreement is reached and the building is proposed for actual sale,” Scozzari said. “If that vote happens it will be preceded by a public hearing at city council and the HRA.”

The Pedro Park plan — officially known in planning documents as the Fitzgerald Park Precinct Plan — was added to the city’s comprehensive plan in 2006 and amended in 2010.

Demolition of the Pedro’s Luggage building in downtown St. Paul, site of a future park., begins March 18, 2011. (Chris Polydoroff / Pioneer Press)

The Pedro family donated the vacant, 82,500-square-foot Pedro Luggage building to the city in 2009 on the condition that the city replace it with a new urban park within five years.

While the city has installed an artistic mural and garden, or “urban flower field,” the quarter-block lot is not yet an official or permanent addition to the city’s park system.

Residents have asked the city to demolish the recently-vacated public safety annex building next door at 100 E. 10th St. and move forward with Pedro Park. Given the likely costs of building and maintaining a park, the mayor’s office in September unveiled a potential partnership with the Minneapolis-based Ackerberg Group, which could draw up to 200 office jobs.

The proposal was the best of three that were submitted to the city this summer by developers in response to a request for proposals, said Jonathan Sage-Martinson, director of the city’s Department of Planning and Economic Development.

MODERN SPACE NEEDED

The decision to test the market “came at a time when the city was hearing from a lot of businesses downtown that they were unable to find the kind of creative, modern office space that they were looking for,” Sage-Martinson said.

“That included two very public cases where we had innovation firms leave the city of St. Paul because they couldn’t find the right space,” he added, referring to the departure of Cray supercomputers and When I Work, the developers of an online scheduling application.

As part of the plan, Ackerberg would fund park improvements to the existing Pedro Park lot and maintain the quarter-block site for 20 years.

Sage-Martinson noted that in addition to Pedro Park, the Fitzgerald Park Precinct Plan also calls for the preservation of historic buildings in the area without blocking development opportunities on the block.

Noecker noted the annex building is not officially listed as a historic resource, either locally or federally.

Frederick Melo was once sued by a reader for $2 million but kept on writing. He came to the Pioneer Press in 2005 and brings a testy East Coast attitude to St. Paul beat reporting. He spent nearly six years covering crime in the Dakota County courts before switching focus to the St. Paul mayor's office, city council, and all things neighborhood-related, from the city's churches to its parks and light rail. A resident of Hamline-Midway, he is married to a Frogtown woman. He Tweets with manic intensity at @FrederickMelo.

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